Gamma Globulin Season

The number of poliomyelitis cases reported in the U.S. as a whole was running about 8% ahead of last year: 2,543 cases since the disease year began April 1, as against 2,361. Local health officers were reporting suspected cases more conscientiously than ever, possibly in hopes of winning allocations of gamma globulin. In fact, the polio season was turning into a gamma globulin season.

Technically not an epidemic site, Alabama's Montgomery County (pop. 139,000) was the first to gain recognition from federal officials as an emergency area entitled to use gamma globulin for mass inoculations. As the county's list of polio victims neared 80, the Office of Defense Mobilization allotted it 250,000 cc (67 gallons), enough to provide shots for more than 30,000 youngsters under ten. Montgomery's doctors and nurses, medical personnel from two Air Force fields, and housewives recruited by the Parent-Teacher Association, set up 18 inoculation stations in schools. From morning to night, for four days, droves of children were run through an assembly-line routine: pants down, an alcohol swab on the buttock, the jab of a needle, and then a lollipop to shut their mouths. Total shots: 32,955.

By week's end, with 86 cases of polio and four deaths, Montgomery County officials felt that they had done all they could. They expected to see little effect for a week; after that, they hoped, temporary immunity conferred by gamma globulin would cut down the total of new polio cases, and especially the proportion of paralytic attacks.

With 84 cases (at least 30 of them paralytic) in a population of 43,000, North Carolina's Caldwell County in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains was actually the nation's hardest hit. The ODM released 100,000 cc of gamma globulin for about 11,000 children under ten, who were to get their shots this week.

Between them, Montgomery and Caldwell Counties had used up about one-tenth of the gamma globulin that ODM had earmarked for mass inoculations this year. There will be enough left for 20 more average-size counties.

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